


Mnemonics

by Seaward



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 10:38:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seaward/pseuds/Seaward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney uses mnemonics to try to explain things to himself, and sometimes, to try to explain things to John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mnemonics

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Elayna and The Guy for taking time to look this over. Any remaining flaws are mine, but I'm new at this, and I tried!
> 
> Spoilers for SGA 2.2 The Intruder through 2.11 The Hive

It seemed like they were missing something.

Sheppard had already moved from saving the Daedalus, and by extension Atlantis and Earth, to teasing. “You did great back there, Rodney. Wanna take the stick?”

“Really?”

“No.”

Rodney could barely see the edges of Sheppard’s head given how the two seats were arranged in the F-302, but he heard settling noises as if Sheppard was relaxing into a more comfortable slouch. They were together in such a small space and yet so separate that they might as well have been talking by radio.

Sheppard said, “They made it,” and Rodney assumed the Daedalus had maneuvered safely away from the sun.

Pressing fingertips to another section of his redder than usual forearm, Rodney said, “Great, but what about us?”

“Really, Rodney, you want to have a relationship talk at a time like this?”

Rodney knew it was casual banter, but it struck home. Maybe that was the something they were missing. John may not have thought about their possibly lethal radiation exposure yet. He’d been too busy saving everyone from the Wraith. Maybe it was just a typical Sheppard day, like flying out to deliver a nuclear bomb during the siege, fully expecting to die without even knowing if he saved Atlantis, and without saying goodbye. Rodney had been left, feeling cut off, as if there was something he should have taken care of first.

The Daedalus saved Sheppard last time, and Sheppard had saved all of them including the Daedalus this time, so maybe now he and the ship were even. Maybe that made sense to a flyboy like Sheppard, but more likely, he was just doing what he always did, casually risking his life to protect others, and not thinking too much about the rest.

Only this time, Rodney was in the F-302 with John. They’d risked their lives together, so John could follow the infected ship far too close to a sun. Maybe Rodney had been just a passenger, but they’d ended up with both of them in the 302 because their shared knowledge had traced the Wraith computer virus to the only possible reservoir, and it had taken both of them to remove the other infected memory modules before the bay depressurized. It reminded Rodney of his best and worst night ever at science camp.

“I jumped off a cliff once.”

“Just once?”

“I was at science camp with Benny, my best friend. I’d met him the summer before, when we were thirteen. He understood more of what I talked about than most people did, especially the math. He wasn’t too shabby at math. Anyway, that summer he started right in about the older boys all jumping off this cliff into a lake. No one had died yet, but I had no intention of risking my brain and an eventual Nobel Prize to satisfy some adolescent male bonding ritual. Still, Benny persuaded me to sneak out one night and scout the area. If he was going to be fool enough to jump, I figured I’d at least help measure the angles and depths involved, so he could be an idiot as safely as possible. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have anyone worth talking to all summer.” Rodney waved his hands as he spoke, even though John couldn’t see from his seat in front.

“Anyway, we ended up standing on this cliff, thirty feet above the water. I hadn’t taken any measurements yet or even figured out how to climb down to the lake below, and we heard voices. It was the camp director and a woman, possibly the botany counselor, coming up the same trail we’d taken to the cliff. So Benny looked down at the water and whispered, ‘One small step for Benny. One giant leap for geek kind.’

“He jumped. I rushed to the edge thinking he’d broken his neck for sure, but instead I saw him surface in the moonlight and start waving for me to jump, too. So there I was in pants and shoes, shirt and sweater, in the dark, on a cliff, and if I didn’t jump, both Benny and I would probably get kicked out of science camp.”

“So you jumped?”Sheppard asked.

“Yes. I did.”

“Sounds fun.”

Rodney remembered being terrified. He hadn’t even thought to take a breath. In the water he’d just let himself sink, not knowing which way was up. He must have been buoyant enough that his body found its own way. Then Benny had grabbed his arm and started tugging toward the shore. They’d both made it out and into the woods. Without a word he’d followed Benny, and then at some point they’d stopped and Benny had suggested they take their clothes off and wring them out so they weren’t dripping when they snuck back into the dorms. One thing led to another, and Rodney discovered that it felt very different to have someone else’s hand jerking him off and to have his hand on someone else’s cock. It had been a very memorable summer after that.

“Yeah, fun.” Rodney said, then shook his head bringing himself back to the present. “Did someone lead you into it the first time, the first time you risked your life?”

“I don’t even know when the first time would be. I would have said the Air Force, but you’d probably count riding a motor cycle on a mountain road.”

“If you drive like you fly. When was the first time you thought you might die?”

“Look, McKay, I’m sorry I dragged you through the coronasphere, but there was no other way. We’ll rendezvous with the Daedalus as soon as she calls, and Beckett will take care of whatever radiation you’ve been exposed to. Most likely your risk of skin cancer someday goes from .15 to 1.5 percent.”

Rodney heard Sheppard switch back to calling him McKay, switch back to addressing immediate concerns. Rodney felt the weight of everything Sheppard wasn’t comfortable discussing, but he didn’t want to force it. He wanted to reach out and touch Sheppard, but he couldn’t do that either. “Go ahead, dismiss it like surfing without sunscreen. And did you really use the word coronasphere?”

“If I can fly through it, I can name it.”

“It’s okay. You can admit to knowing science words around me.” He meant more than what he could say.

“Gee, thanks. Can I jump off a cliff with you, too?”

Rodney wondered if Sheppard meant more, too.

-

Sheppard and McKay were the last ones in the mess the day after Rodney regained sole rights to his body. Rodney was trying to erase the feeling of having Cadman living inside him, and randomly taking over to humiliate him, by shoving another tray of food into his mouth. The meal included mashed potatoes, which really helped.

“You’re trying to sculpt that into the mountain from Close Encounters, right?”

“What?” Rodney looked at his plate. Maybe he’d been working from the outside in and his mashed potatoes looked a bit mountainous, but—“No, I am enjoying my food. Any other questions?”

“Cadman picked on what you ate, didn’t she?”

“If she did, I’d be used to it. Wouldn’t I?” He tried to glare at Sheppard, but the Colonel just reached out a finger and wiped away some potatoes that had dropped onto Rodney’s shirt. Then Sheppard sucked the potatoes off his finger, and Rodney spun from comfort food and an almost comfortable friendly gesture to feeling his cock twitch at the way Sheppard sucked his finger. Sheppard pulled the finger partway out of his mouth, then pushed it in again, then licked it. Surely that wasn’t necessary for cleaning off mashed potatoes.

Rodney found himself speaking without thinking. “Remember when I told you about Benny?”

“Huh?”

“The person I followed off a cliff?

“Right, Benny, like lemming, got it.”

Rodney shook his head, not seeing how Benny was like lemming at all but not wanting to get sidetracked by typical Sheppard weirdness.

“Anyway, after knowing Benny, I came up with this system for understanding different kinds of touch, and I thought it might be useful to you. It’s been pretty useful to me, and it’s easy to remember, because it’s based on the different types of quarks.”

“Thanks for sharing, but I don’t think this is going to help me.”

“You do know the six types of quarks: up, down, strange, charm, top, bottom?”

“Yes, Rodney. Even without a degree in physics, those of us who travel through wormholes tend to pick up the basics.”

“Good, except when I was a teenager the cool physicists—“

“Cool physicists?”

Rodney waved his fork, “Okay, the physicists that I admired were still arguing to call the last two: truth and beauty.”

“You thought calling sub-atomic particles truth and beauty would be cool?”

“It led to presentation titles like ‘Bound and Excited Truth and Beauty.’”

Sheppard laughed, and Rodney felt his body vibrate as if attuned to the sound. “Okay, score one for some physicist,” Sheppard said

“Anyway, my system is very simple. Up touch is anything that gets you aroused, in other words “up.” Down touch is when people offer comfort like a pat or hug after bad news. Strange is sort of a kluge, I admit, but here in the Pegasus galaxy, it happens all the time, like that foreheads together thing that Teyla does. Charm is touch you feel without actually being touched.”

“Like?”

Sheppard raised one eyebrow and met Rodney’s eyes as he asked, which seemed to tear open an empty spot just behind Rodney’s ribs. He wanted to say, “Like that,” but instead he said, “Like when someone winks at you or checks you out.”

Sheppard winked at him. Rodney felt it as a shiver across his skin.

“Truth is stuff that just happens without trying. It’s not an accident, but a true expression of someone or of the situation between two people.”

“Like when we get surrounded and Teyla stands behind me facing the other way, because we’ve got each other’s backs?”

“No, maybe, I don’t know. Is that trained or instinctive?” Rodney had been thinking of how John so often stood close or bumped Rodney’s shoulder, or in this case ate spilled food off his shirt. The last person he’d known who touched him that casually had been Benny, but Rodney was glad he didn’t have to say it.

“So, beauty?”

“I haven’t finished studying that, yet. I was a teenager when I came up with this, and lots of books and movies talked about touch that went way beyond what other touch meant. So I left that category for further research.”

“Or you could just research top and bottom, they’re easier to define.”

“Not as cool.”

“You never know.” Sheppard raised an eyebrow in a definite charm touch, and Rodney couldn’t help thinking about top and bottom.

-

After Collins died on Doranda Rodney couldn’t keep still. He could barely work. He ended up confronting Sheppard in the hall in front of Sheppard’s room, since Sheppard wouldn’t let him inside.

“I’ve never asked this of you before, but I think I’ve earned it. Trust me.”

Sheppard agreed, and Rodney felt it fill him up inside. That ought to count as charm touch, but it wasn’t about charm. It was about John. Rodney wasn’t entirely sure what it was about, but it gave him another chance to understand.

-

Rodney blew that chance and ended up pacing around his empty lab as hollowness threatened to devour everything he was, even the brain he needed to think with, and he couldn’t let that happen. He’d destroyed five-sixths of a solar system and gotten Collins killed. If he were a better man, he’d be tearing himself up over Collins. He was pretty sure he’d still get to that eventually, and when he did it would tear him apart in a way that hurt, but that might eventually end.

What was tearing him apart now was frustration, and he didn’t know if it would ever end. He was used to professional frustration, even if he had as big an ego as everyone thought, how could he compete against the Ancients? He could pull miracles out of his ass everyday and never figure out one tenth of what was in their database. Then there was sexual frustration, which he was pretty used to, even if crushing on Major, no Colonel Sheppard, added a new twist to the problems he usually had in that department. At least he was used to coping with frustration. The whole trust thing, that was sort of new.

Sheppard had trusted him, and Rodney had been wrong and almost gotten them both killed. At the worst moment in the Ancient outpost, he’d felt better thinking he would die with Sheppard rather than die knowing he’d broken that trust.

Then tonight, after apologizing to everyone else, he’d gone to Sheppard, expecting anger and to see whatever was between them destroyed. Instead, Sheppard had been more or less understanding. Right then, in the same day that Rodney had destroyed so much and almost gotten them both killed, Sheppard had managed to say he might trust Rodney again, if Rodney “really, really” tried to earn that trust back.

Rodney finally identified the type of frustration that was eating him alive. It came from knowing how Sheppard’s trust had filled him, and how empty he felt without it, knowing he might or might not ever earn it back. That sort of frustration cut from the inside out, and was really hard for Rodney to ignore.

He stayed in lab all night, going over Zelenka’s work with the few brain cells he could focus. He really should have taken the time to listen before, even if Zelenka could easily have been wrong, Rodney had made a professional mistake by not listening. He was used to professional mistakes that embarrassed him and upset other scientists, but this one left Collins dead, and by morning Rodney was starting to feel overwhelmed.

He went back to his room to shower and change clothes, hoping no one would notice that he hadn’t slept. In the shower he realized he couldn’t create a mnemonic for different types of frustration, because they refused to fit neatly into categories. Frustration was more like radiation, forming a spectrum where humans could perceive only a small section directly, like visible light. If they chose to describe that radiation as waves, that only told part of the story, but he didn’t have enough focus left to tackle quantum that morning, so he started assigning colors to his spectrum of frustration.

At breakfast he sat with his team, stared at his tray, and had an unaccountably hard time eating. He made no pretense of following the conversation. He felt Sheppard’s eyes on him and decided the frustration from losing his trust would have a large amplitude and low frequency on his spectrum, like the color red. It wasn’t going away for a long time, like the last light from the setting sun. The other end, in the violet range, had to be smaller, faster frustrations that came and went in the course of a day. Sexual frustration was mostly violet, going away when the object of desire left the room or after a quick jerk off in the shower. Most of his professional frustrations were probably in the indigo to blue range. He’d already apologized for and partly gotten over his last big mistake on a professional level. Frustration with never catching up to the Ancients would be toward the other end, maybe orange, but it was diminishing, out of phase right now with his frustration at loss of trust.

Rodney stood to clear his tray and saw Sheppard was the only one left at the table. They walked silently out of the mess hall together, as their shoulder bumped in that truthful and not quite unintentional way Sheppard said, “No one expects you to be right all the time, you know?”

“I try to exceed expectations.” Rodney meant it to be witty, to demonstrate he still had a sense of humor, but it fell flat. Sheppard forced a half smile that nearly ripped Rodney apart and caused a stirring in his cock that he really shouldn’t be capable of at a time like this.

Rodney hurried off to lab observing how his sexual frustration faded fast, like violet light in his model. He was kind of touched that Sheppard had tried to appease his professional pride, but he was mostly over that frustration too, as fit its position at the blue end of his spectrum. The shoulder bump brought up something else, an almost physical ache to be touched, to be held or comforted. It made Rodney feel small, and he pushed it down with whatever he wasn’t ready to feel about Collins yet.

By night all of Rodney’s frustrations were threatening to overwhelm him. He did the most mature thing he could manage and hid in his room. First he gobbled down a power bar and some water. Then he stripped to boxers and tee shirt and curled into a tight ball in his bed. When that wasn’t enough, he pulled the covers close around himself and finally over his head. He thought he might be experiencing touch frustration, because wrapping himself up tightly seemed to help. He wasn’t sure where it would fit on his spectrum, but definitely toward the sunset end. That struck him as potentially funny, since the sun was probably setting outside about now, and if he’d needed to explain his thoughts to Sheppard, he would have tried to make the sunset parallel into a joke. He knew it would fail. Anyway, there was no sense imagining he’d ever talk to Sheppard or anyone else about his frustration model. They’d be surprised if they realized how much he never talked about, despite the fact that he talked all the time. That thought brought him back to trust. If earning back Sheppard’s trust was at the heart of the frustration at the red end of his spectrum, then trusting Sheppard or anyone with everything he thought would have to be out in infrared, out where he couldn’t even see it.

Still, he imagined Sheppard coming into his quarters, slipping off his shoes, and curling around Rodney on the bed. He imagined Sheppard’s arm around his nest of blankets and Sheppard’s voice saying, “It’s okay, Rodney, tell me about it.”

All of Rodney’s frustrations seemed to come in sync and peak at once. He felt tears on his face as he cried for Collins who had nothing to do with any of the rest and didn’t fit into any models Rodney could create. Rodney had failed, and Collins had died, and Rodney was okay with crying now.

-

At breakfast the next morning, Rodney sat with his team again. This time he ate, devouring a huge plate of food, because he felt so empty inside and it was all he could do. Afterward Sheppard walked with him again, and watched as Rodney cleared his tray of a dozen empty plates and bowls.

“Guess your appetite is back.”

“That’s me, all about the cafeteria food.” Rodney knew it sounded forced. He’d somehow lost the ability to talk to Sheppard. They walked down the hall in silence.

Before they went their separate ways Sheppard stopped, slouching at the corner with his arms crossed, “You can’t do anything about Collins.”

“I know.” Rodney couldn’t meet Sheppard’s eyes. On some level he was grateful that Sheppard cared even this much, knew him even well enough to offer some attempt at support two mornings in a row. But Rodney didn’t know what to say. There was no shoulder bump or touch this time, and Rodney muddled through the rest of his day not just frustrated but bereft.

-

The night after he rescued John from the Wraith infested Ancient simulation and they drank a toast to the crew of the Aurora, Rodney stopped by Sheppard’s quarters hoping he might have redeemed himself.

John still wouldn’t let him in, so Rodney stood in the hallway and asked, “Have I earned your trust back?”

The corners of John’s mouth turned down and he said, “Not yet, why? You want me to intercede with Weir on something? You might have won Caldwell to your side. You could ask him.”

Rodney shook his head. “I just wanted to know.”

-

When Ford forced him to take the enzyme, Rodney thought he was going to lose control and possibly lose his mind. He had to fix a Wraith dart, and he just couldn’t fix it. Had to think and couldn’t. Had to sleep and couldn’t.

After a few nights there, Rodney was lying on his mat on the floor, curled on his side, practically shaking with the feelings stirred up by the enzyme, and fighting with his personal need for control. Sheppard got up from his own sleeping mat and with his usual disregard for personal space sat down behind Rodney’s back and rested a hand on Rodney’s shoulder. “Go to sleep.”

“You talking to me is supposed to make that easier?”

“Go to sleep, Rodney. I’ve got your back.” It was a near thing, and Rodney almost rolled over, not sure if he’d clobber Sheppard or cling to him. Instead he focused on the warm hand, steady on his shoulder, and he was able to sleep.

-

By the end of the mission with Ford and his lost boys, Rodney was working on a new model to help him understand what came after frustration. He thought a mnemonic based on the laws of thermodynamics might work.

Rodney knew he’d been pissy over things with Sheppard even before Ford’s goons captured them, but then he’d almost killed himself with an enzyme overdose, which hadn’t even helped to save Sheppard or the rest of his team in the end. He’d suffered through thinking Sheppard was dead, again, and watched him shrug the whole thing off when they talked in the infirmary.

Rodney wanted to be done with it. He felt like a husk rubbed raw by frustration and alien enzymes. Whatever game Sheppard thought he was playing with his casual, truthful touches or his words about trust, Rodney wasn’t sure he could face another day of it. He certainly couldn’t face dinner in the mess hall.

Rodney was sitting in his room with a power bar when Sheppard showed up at his door.

“Can I come in?”

Rodney wanted to say no. Sheppard had said no the last two times Rodney went to see him.

Sheppard pulled something from his pocket, wrapped in a napkin. “I brought you a cornbread muffin, since you missed dinner.”

Rodney still wanted to send him away, but for once words seemed to fail him. He stepped aside and Sheppard walked through his door. When Sheppard handed him the muffin, Rodney took it and sat on his bed to eat.

Sheppard sat beside him, close enough that Rodney could feel the heat from his leg. But Rodney had nothing to say, so they sat in silence until Rodney had finished the muffin.

“Beckett told me how close you came to dying from the enzyme you injected. I’m sorry you thought you had to do that to get away from those guys. We would have come back for you.”

Rodney shook his head, eyes fixed on his own knees. “I didn’t do it to escape. I came back here to tell them where you’d gone, but I failed, and even when we got the Daedalus to the hive ships, we couldn’t save you.”

“You don’t need to save me.”

“I really, really did need to. I just wasn’t good enough.”

Sheppard bumped Rodney’s shoulder, and Rodney thought it was both a truth touch and a down touch, and wondered about putting those two quarks together.

Sheppard looked sideways at Rodney, and Rodney half met his eyes as Sheppard said, “You’re way beyond good enough, and I may have been wrong to say you needed to earn my trust again. When I convinced Elizabeth to let us go back to Doranda, she told me you sometimes needed someone to protect you from yourself. I told her I could do that. I took that responsibility, and we both screwed up.”

“Does that mean you trust me again?”

“Maybe I always did, or maybe I don’t trust myself or you sometimes.”

Rodney’s stomach flipped. He didn’t know how Sheppard could be sitting beside him saying all this, probably something in infrared that he couldn’t see would explain it. Still, to Rodney it seemed to show a great deal of trust, a trust Rodney wanted to return. He leaned forward and kissed John, on the mouth, and surprisingly enough, John kissed back.

John’s lips were soft, and warm, and the touch filled places in Rodney that had been empty. He didn’t want to stop to breathe, but when they had to, John stayed close, right in Rodney’s face.

“We were talking about more than I thought we were talking about, weren’t we?” John asked.

“Maybe.”

“Cool.”

John kissed Rodney, and pretty soon his tongue was brushing Rodney’s lips. Then the kiss became something much more desperate, and John pulled Rodney’s shirt off. John’s mouth came back to kiss its way down Rodney’s neck while John move his hands across Rodney’s back and then across his chest.

Rodney reached for John’s shirt, and John obliged by lifting his arms and pulling back for a few seconds. Then Rodney leaned in to capture John’s mouth and ended up pushing him back onto the bed. The feel of their skin, of their chests pressed together, brought back traces of all the truth touches but also the moments when Rodney thought John was dead. Now whatever they were doing was up, down and truth quarks all mixed together. It didn’t feel strange though, it felt right.

John’s hand slid between them to cup Rodney’s cock through his pants, and Rodney found it hard to think, but the intensity of the touch shot through him. He reached for John’s pants, stroking and fumbling with the buttons.

Then John broke away from kissing to say, “We should each get the rest of our clothes off, right?”

“If that’s what you want.” Rodney fell back on words, but his voice came out much lower than he’d expected.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” John sounded much closer to normal, scratching his fingers over Rodney’s fly in a way that was almost painful given how hard he was.

Rodney searched for John’s eyes, uncertain for a moment, but they were right there staring at him, greener and darker than he ever remembered them being.

John stood and removed his pants, boxers, socks and shoes so fast that Rodney could only stare. Then John stood naked in front of him, cock hard and dark and straining toward Rodney.

Naked John said “Up!” and Rodney managed to stand. John undid Rodney’s pants and pulled them down in one tug with the boxers.

Rodney’s cock broke free, and John’s mouth was right there. John licked the length and took the head in his mouth, and Rodney felt warmth and pleasure shoot through him. It was so hot and perfect. Rodney felt like he was falling and John pushed him back across the bed, still licking and sucking. Rodney tried to move but his legs were still caught in the pants around his calves, and he could only whimper. John sucked him deep into his mouth and then pulled back and forward again. Rodney knew he couldn’t take much of that and he reached down saying “John, oh god, not yet.”

John climbed up over him, that ridiculous smile beaming down. John’s hands stroked large circles on Rodney’s chest, brushing his nipples, and Rodney closed his eyes trying not to whimper again. He reached up to stroke John’s nipples and then slid a hand down to trace John’s cock. John leaned down and kissed him with his tongue pushing in and out of Rodney’s mouth until their bodies started rubbing together with the same rhythm. Both moved, and suddenly everything lined up just right with John’s leg between Rodney’s and both of their cocks pressed between them, rubbing against each other and their bodies until Rodney couldn’t stop himself and he was coming like a teenager and couldn’t remember ever feeling so good. Then John was coming and their kiss was mostly panting into each other’s mouths.

For a moment they lay pressed together, John mostly on top of him. Then Rodney felt John slide down, finish pulling off Rodney’s clothes and shoes, and use some piece of clothing to wipe both of their bodies mostly clean.

Rodney lay there, overwhelmed by the abundance of touch and trust, and when John came back and collapsed beside him with an arm across his chest, it felt like he had everything he’d ever wanted.

-

When Rodney woke the room was dark, and it took a moment to realize that it wasn’t his clock that was in the wrong place. He was sleeping diagonally across his bed with John pressed up beside him and half on top of him. The warmth and skin felt wonderful, but Rodney’s back and neck were screaming, and he knew he had to move.

Very carefully, he tried to extract himself from John until he could sit up on the edge of the bed, rolling his shoulders and his neck.

John didn’t seem to move, but in a soft clear voice John asked, “Freaking out much?”

“No! Of course not.” Rodney heard a little whine in his voice and tried to calm it. “My back and neck just woke me up to say these stupid Atlantis beds weren’t made for this.”

“So long as you’re only unhappy with the bed.”

John sat up and kissed Rodney. The kiss was soft and giving, but Rodney’s neck still shot through with pain.

“Lie down,” John said, “On your stomach.”

Rodney tried, but his neck hurt either way he turned his head. John seemed to see the problem and pushed the pillow down so it was mostly under Rodney’s shoulders, letting Rodney keep his neck straight with his face against the mattress. Then Rodney felt John straddle his back and slide both hands up along his spine to rub his shoulders and neck. The touch was gentle and warm, so not what he expected from John. But hadn’t John always been there, with the easy touches and warmth in Rodney’s personal space?

“You don’t have to—” Rodney started to say.

“No aliens making me do it.”

“Not like I’m doing much for you either.”

“Sure,” John said as he leaned forward to kiss Rodney’s neck while still massaging, and he dug his erection into Rodney’s back.

Rodney felt his cock respond against the mattress, and suddenly the warm comfort of the massage became something more as well. John worked his way across Rodney’s shoulders with hands and kisses. He traced up and down Rodney’s spine, first loosening the muscles and then kissing or licking to produce a different kind of tension until finally he moved on to rubbing and kissing Rodney’s ass. By that point Rodney was totally hard and feeling no pain.

“John, I need more.”

“Give me a few minutes. I’m playing here.”

Then John rubbed and kissed his way down Rodney’s legs, rolled Rodney over, and mostly kissed and licked his way back up. When he licked Rodney’s scrotum and carefully took each ball into his mouth, Rodney couldn’t help himself, he groaned. When John licked up along the shaft, Rodney pushed up toward John’s mouth. But John continued working his way up, exploring Rodney’s stomach and chest.

Then they were kissing again, and Rodney’s hands could reach John’s ass, which was even more fun to squeeze than to watch. The muscles pulsed against Rodney’s hands as John’s cock rubbed against Rodney’s. Then John groaned into Rodney’s mouth and it finally seemed so real, and Rodney wanted to learn every touch that would bring John to this place and draw out such noises.

Rodney rolled John over, forcing them almost to the edge of the narrow bed and then nudging John’s hips to get him closer to the center. Rodney pushed into another kiss feeling himself get a little sloppy and wild, and John responded with an eager tongue and mouth. Rodney slid his hands up John’s arms and down his chest, lingering at the nipples when he made John gasp and buck up against him. Then Rodney worked his mouth down John’s throat, taking in John’s scent up close, and drifted lower until his mouth reached a nipple and sucked it in.

John gasped, “Now please.”

“I’m playing now.”

John let out a frustrated groan that reverberated through his chest and Rodney slid a hand around John’s hip and took hold of John’s cock.

“You have to play to win.”

“You think it’s a game?”

“Not—thinking…” John gasped as he thrust up into Rodney’s hand.

Rodney brought his mouth down and licked the tip of John’s cock, causing him to thrust harder and tighten across the chest. Rodney kept his eyes open, appreciating the ripples across John’s body as Rodney sucked on his cock. He tried to keep it slow to make it last, but with just a few more thrusts John was tensing, then coming in his mouth and Rodney kept sucking gently to coax every last bit out as John gasped and panted.

Then John was pulling him up, kissing him, sharing the taste of sex, and trapping Rodney’s very hard cock against John’s hip. John smiled into the kiss and Rodney felt warmed all the way through. John eased down and slid his warm mouth over Rodney’s cock. He sucked down and up and circled his tongue around the tip until Rodney thought he’d explode. Then John pulled back a few inches and asked, “What would you like to win?”

“Uh!” was all Rodney could manage and John smiled like it was the best answer in the world.

John used his tongue to lap along Rodney’s cock, and Rodney watched, feeling totally out of control and not minding a bit. John took him to the edge and back twice and then finally made him come with an orgasm that left him melting into the bed.

Then John was beside him, warm and solid, and Rodney had never felt so free from frustration and thoroughly well touched. He was drifting off into blissed out sleep when he heard John whisper, “Maybe I understand what you meant about the beauty quark.”

The end


End file.
